The agency is expected next week to approve a $1.1 billion contract to dig the extension from Times Square west to 11th Avenue, then downtown to a terminal at 34th Street.

Not only will plans for a stop at 41st Street and 11th Avenue be eliminated, but the MTA may not even build a planned shell for a future station.

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Normally, the MTA wouldn’t spend $2.1 billion to add a single station, but the city is footing the bill as part of its development of the West Side rail yards.

There is an option to build the station shell for $500 million more, but the MTA would be responsible for overruns and doesn’t have the money. Transit advocates called the decision to possibly eliminate the station a grave error.

The most severely affected student athlete was hospitalized for a few days, and eight other team members and a coach received outpatient treatment, Iona spokeswoman Cecelia Donohoe said.

All the cases have been caught early and were mild, “a pimple or a boil,” she said.

OTB revenues exceed operating expenses, he said, but OTB has to turn so much of its profit over to the state that the city cannot reap a benefit.

“The state uses it as a cash cow, and the city has been subsidizing the state, and we are not going to continue to do that,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference on Roosevelt Island.

The operation in New York City opened 36 years ago to generate revenue and diminish the influence of organized crime on gambling.

While the bakery is still firmly devoted to its original savory and sweet cheese knishes, special knishes periodically appear on the menu that reflect the neighborhood’s changing tastes and demographics. As the knishery moves closer to its centennial in 2010, it now caters to a number of distinct crowds: the traditional knish lover who grew up on them; tourists who don’t know what a knish is; and a newer, younger generation that may not necessarily have had knishes before or know they are supposed to be eaten with a dollop of mustard.

With these varied groups in mind, Yonah Schimmel now produces special knishes, including jalapeno and cheddar, salmon and pizza — and even pumpkin-raisin in October and November.

“It tastes like pumpkin pie,” employee Dane Lepson said of the pumpkin-raisin knish.

“I invent lots of new ones,” Lepson said. “Do you know what the next knish is going to be?”

“Ice cream?” manager Alex Wolfman joked.

“Spinach and feta,” Lepson said.

But the curtain fell on the Joe Torre Era yesterday when Torre, who will someday enter the Hall of Fame for his work as the Yankees’ manager, rejected the team’s one-year contract offer to stay. The Yankees said they would begin a search for a new manager.

Torre flew to Tampa, Fla., yesterday to meet with the team’s principal owner, George Steinbrenner, after two days of organizational meetings had ended with no announcement. The Yankees offered Torre $5 million, but he could have earned an additional $3 million — and a guaranteed $8 million salary in 2009 — if he had led the Yankees to the World Series next season.

The salary would have kept Torre as the highest-paid manager in the majors, but the guaranteed portion would have represented a cut from his present salary, which averaged $6.4 million over the last three seasons. In each year of that contract, the Yankees lost in the first round of the playoffs.

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